A number of business applications are used these days in order to provide various types of services, for example, in area s like insurance, banking, retails, etc. These business applications function on the basis of one or more decision logics, which in turn are provided by rules. Such rules can control a particular business process being implemented by the business application performing one or more tasks. In such cases, the subsequent tasks are performed only when the rules that permit ending the previous task, and those that determine that the next task should be entered, have been satisfied. Such application rules can also assist in decision-making and can have a significant impact on decision support applications. For example, a rule system can determine whether or not to extend credit to a customer, how much credit to extend, etc.
However, such decision logic can often change due to unforeseen, inevitable, or dynamic market conditions, or due to changes in the policies of an organization that uses the business application. Hence, the business applications which are based on these rules should be capable of accommodating such changes. One of the ways to accommodate such market changes in the business application is to employ a rule engine, which externalizes the rules for the application code of the business application. In such a case, the business rules can be changed without making any changes to application code of the business application.
However, conventional rule engines, generally, require the business application to be temporarily down for defining any new rules or to edit the already existing rules. Further, conventional rule engines may be complex and computationally heavy in their design and implementation, thereby rendering such defining and editing of the rules difficult and time-consuming.